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"I guess we can all figure out why UH and CCF are trying to out-duel each other, building expensive, redundant facilities that will be an enormous financial burden to our economy and population, both of which are shrinking and in distress."

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If
you still think there's a secret sauce to your hospital becoming more
"consumer friendly," these 5 steps are as good a place to start as any.
Unfortunately, it's a little like that old Steve Martin comedy bit
where he says he'll teach you how to be rich. The first step is to go
find a million dollars.

Step 1 from the article is realizing that
"...a Medicare beneficiary with chronic conditions is different from a
young mom who brings her kids in for an annual check-up." This is market
segmentation for beginners, and, yes, one size decidedly does not fit
all. I'm sure your marketing team's been saying this for a while.

Steps 2-5: have a strategy, metrics, a champion and resources. OK. Hard to argue with any of those.

But
those things, alone or together, won't overcome culture. They're
important components to be sure, but insufficient without a …

How might health care providers use technology to turn customers' mobile phones into information displays and ordering devices? A few years ago, the NY Times outlined how retailers are doing it...
"(Designer Norma) Kamali is at the forefront of a technological transformation coming to many of the nation’s retailers. They are determined to strengthen the link between their physical stores and the Web, and to use technology to make shopping easier for consumers and more lucrative for themselves....

Cisco Systems, the supplier of networking equipment and services for the Internet, is also a leader in the field. The company’s Mobile Concierge system is capable of connecting customers’ smartphones to retailers’ wireless networks — so a shopper could type “Cheez Whiz” into a cellphone, then pinpoint its location in the store."
Ms. Kamali's boutique installed a technology called ScanLife, "allowing people to scan bar codes on merchandise and obtain details about the…

After last Friday's Appeals Court decision, Anthem's hostile takeover of, er, merger with Cigna has but a faint pulse. Good. Unplug the respirator. Cigna's figured it out but Anthem is like that late-late horror show where the corpse refuses to die. Meanwhile, 150 McKinsey consultants are on standby for post-merger "integration" support. I guess "no deal, no paycheck..." is powerfully motivating to keep the patient alive a while longer.

In court, Anthem argued that assembling a $54 billion behemoth is a necessary precondition to sparking all manner of wondrous innovations and delivering $2.4 billion in efficiencies. The basic argument appears to be "We need to double in size to grow a brain. And just imagine all those savings translating directly into lower premiums for employers and consumers."